媒体在美国社会中的角色
Roles Performed by Media in Contemporary American Society
Jessie Su
1. Introduction
What the roles the media perform is basically determined by the functions of news. Different from other industries, media produce news and spread news. Without new, media will only play as a circus for entertainment. Therefore, as introduced in our text book, the mass media perform three roles in America society. They are the signaler role, the common-carrier role and the watchdog role. Those three main roles are all depend on the natural characters and history of the traditional news media.
However, admitted by most people, we are in a new age, an information age, and the development of information technology has greatly changed the situation and format of the media. The positions of traditional roles have had some changes, and some other roles have become more notable.
2. Changes of the traditional roles
2.1. The signaler role:
Impulse by the efficient network and the fierce competition, media now are quite proficient to reveal every kind of news. And also with the help of graphic and audio technologies, it becomes easy and comfortable for audience to learn the facts. Thus, it pushes the news to be immediate and overflowed, without adequate rethought and lack of deep investigations.
2.2. The common- carrier role:
Though America's Founding Fathers did not hesitate to protect a free press, and drafted a provision in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that guarantees freedom of the press against government interference, political powers still possess a strong position which can leave great effects on media. The commercial competitions and inventions of new techniques aggravate the “news inflation”, which reduce the reliability of those political and military leaders’ lectures. However, after that disjunctive event, the traditional political power realized the problem and turns to make use of media strategies instead of control it directly. At the same time, pursuing transparency as an ideal makes media fall into the myth of landscape-style news, which may let media immerse in the surfaces of affairs and fail to tell the truth as a whole.
2.3. The watchdog role
Though as a special commercial industry of providing news and information, it still can’t get rid of pursuing for economic benefits, and the media is no doubt influenced by commercial interests will. The audience's consumption used to the main source of income. But with public relations and advertising industries’ rapidly development, revenue from propaganda investments by companies has greatly increased, and even exceeds the sale of the audience. So presently, many media have failed to realize the function of public supervision. For the pursuit of economic interests, some media conceal bad behavior or fabricate good information for some cooperative companies.
3. New significant roles
3.1. Individual expression:
Supported by the widely covered and popular internet, media now is capable to provide much more channels for people to express themselves than before. Media is helping the development of democracy. The seller’s market is segmented, while various identities grow. However, with the fast and easy communication channels, it also helps the so called globalization.
3.2. Form of culture market
Despite of the critique about the vulgarization of mass media, positively, it helps the “poor” artists to create awareness and economic effects. In addition, “market journalism” brings classical culture much closer to ordinary people, as well as makes the classical culture mixing and mediocre. Thence, we can conclude that we are living in an industrial production and mass consumption society. Media is the form of cultural industry. And the cultural propagated by media is a kind of mass industrial culture, which is differentiation and mediocre in quality. The impact on culture system is great, then, does it influence people much? Some studies have showed that the audiences are not passive at all. Their culture concepts base on the impacts of daily life, family, social concepts and so on. Therefore, the influence is obvious.
4. Conclusion
We are evolving into a new generation, the age of media. As the media has produced significant influence on social life in America, a variety of people even consider media as the fourth power of the world after the traditional three powers. The patterns and modes of media have changed a lot, and keep changing. What’s the roles performed by the media in America is still under discussion, especially the use of internet means much beyond we can predict.
Jessie Su
1. Introduction
What the roles the media perform is basically determined by the functions of news. Different from other industries, media produce news and spread news. Without new, media will only play as a circus for entertainment. Therefore, as introduced in our text book, the mass media perform three roles in America society. They are the signaler role, the common-carrier role and the watchdog role. Those three main roles are all depend on the natural characters and history of the traditional news media.
However, admitted by most people, we are in a new age, an information age, and the development of information technology has greatly changed the situation and format of the media. The positions of traditional roles have had some changes, and some other roles have become more notable.
2. Changes of the traditional roles
2.1. The signaler role:
Impulse by the efficient network and the fierce competition, media now are quite proficient to reveal every kind of news. And also with the help of graphic and audio technologies, it becomes easy and comfortable for audience to learn the facts. Thus, it pushes the news to be immediate and overflowed, without adequate rethought and lack of deep investigations.
2.2. The common- carrier role:
Though America's Founding Fathers did not hesitate to protect a free press, and drafted a provision in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that guarantees freedom of the press against government interference, political powers still possess a strong position which can leave great effects on media. The commercial competitions and inventions of new techniques aggravate the “news inflation”, which reduce the reliability of those political and military leaders’ lectures. However, after that disjunctive event, the traditional political power realized the problem and turns to make use of media strategies instead of control it directly. At the same time, pursuing transparency as an ideal makes media fall into the myth of landscape-style news, which may let media immerse in the surfaces of affairs and fail to tell the truth as a whole.
2.3. The watchdog role
Though as a special commercial industry of providing news and information, it still can’t get rid of pursuing for economic benefits, and the media is no doubt influenced by commercial interests will. The audience's consumption used to the main source of income. But with public relations and advertising industries’ rapidly development, revenue from propaganda investments by companies has greatly increased, and even exceeds the sale of the audience. So presently, many media have failed to realize the function of public supervision. For the pursuit of economic interests, some media conceal bad behavior or fabricate good information for some cooperative companies.
3. New significant roles
3.1. Individual expression:
Supported by the widely covered and popular internet, media now is capable to provide much more channels for people to express themselves than before. Media is helping the development of democracy. The seller’s market is segmented, while various identities grow. However, with the fast and easy communication channels, it also helps the so called globalization.
3.2. Form of culture market
Despite of the critique about the vulgarization of mass media, positively, it helps the “poor” artists to create awareness and economic effects. In addition, “market journalism” brings classical culture much closer to ordinary people, as well as makes the classical culture mixing and mediocre. Thence, we can conclude that we are living in an industrial production and mass consumption society. Media is the form of cultural industry. And the cultural propagated by media is a kind of mass industrial culture, which is differentiation and mediocre in quality. The impact on culture system is great, then, does it influence people much? Some studies have showed that the audiences are not passive at all. Their culture concepts base on the impacts of daily life, family, social concepts and so on. Therefore, the influence is obvious.
4. Conclusion
We are evolving into a new generation, the age of media. As the media has produced significant influence on social life in America, a variety of people even consider media as the fourth power of the world after the traditional three powers. The patterns and modes of media have changed a lot, and keep changing. What’s the roles performed by the media in America is still under discussion, especially the use of internet means much beyond we can predict.
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